https://peakd.com/golem/@edicted/golem-and-friends-will-change-crypto-mining-forever

I wrote this one back in March 2018.

Even back then with Steem trading at and above $2 my posts were only paying out $1 or $2 a pop. What a blast from the past. During 2019 the price kept plummeting but my rewards remained stable. It was pretty interesting to see the price crash while my network influence rose as the same rate.

Now with the price of Hive trading at 14 cents, it is not uncommon for me to get a $10 payout on a post. If Hive was still trading around $2 my payouts would easily have a USD value of $140 or more. Pretty crazy when we do the math. The good ol' days could be back in as little as a year. Wish in one hand...

Mining 2.0

This is a term I coined back in the day to signify mining that actually accomplishes a given task rather than just participating in a lottery that consumes a lot of energy. As we can see even back then there were a lot of projects out there that were trying to accomplish this, and they are still around today.

The problem with these projects is that they are much easier said than done. The one I was most bullish on was Golem. I haven't looked into it in a while but the dev team is extremely capable. However, decentralized security and validation of work completed is a much more complex task than it looks like on the surface.

For example, I have absolutely zero faith in the Deepbrain Chain project on a fundamental level. Decentralizing AI is a fool's errand once I started actually doing the research and seeing what people on Reddit were saying about the process.

However, on a speculative level, a project like DBC will moon simply because a bunch of newly rich fools are going to throw their money at anything that moves. All you have to do is say "blockchain + AI" and it will get money thrown at it by investors that don't care to understand the technicalities. Who's ready for another round of Greater Fools Theory?

With the advent of Koin mining it got me thinking about this whole mining 2.0 thing again. When are we doing to start mining actual useful data instead of pumping out these lottery tickets? Wouldn't it be more fun to get paid to mine prime numbers, folding proteins, creating pharmaceuticals, etc?

The main point I'd like to make here is that ASIC machine's days might be numbered over the next decade. Generic computing might make a resurgence, increasing the value of CPUs and GPUs that can actually be used to compute the most valuable algorithm on the fly rather than being locked into a single function like ASIC machines are. Or perhaps if that happens ASIC machines will just be built for every function and we'll eventually get back to where we started. Who knows.

In any case, I still need to write a post about these new AMD chips coming out on NOV 5th. I'll get around to it eventually.

Until then: something to think about.

What happens when the primary target (and benchmarks) of new computer hardware stops being gamers & gaming and transitions over to crypto (which also includes gaming :D). The whole game changes when the hardware you buy can be used to mine value. Should be interesting.

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